For about a decade, AMD has been behind in its development of hardware that was directly competitive with Nvidia and Intel’s offerings. For the longest time, AMD had been the underdog of the enthusiast-computer market because of this, among other mistakes made in development of new hardware. In terms of performance, AMD has been 1 or 2 generations behind Intel’s Processors and Nvidia’s GPUs.

The first step toward catching up and competing is now here! Earlier this year, AMD released its newest generation of processors running the so-called “RYZEN” architecture. Their strategy is excellent: RYZEN CPUs are only slightly less powerful than Intel’s offerings, but are half the price.

I am very hopeful for AMD’s future, especially with the upcoming release of their RX Vega line of GPUs some time in the coming months this year. If Vega is as much of a success as RYZEN, AMD will once again be a power player in the enthusiast and gaming PC market.